The present invention relates generally to content services, and more specifically, to sharing access to personal content items with one or more groups of individuals.
Most online services are inconvenient for collaborative group activities. If a user wants to share a content item accessible from his local device or from his account on an online service, he will generally have to perform multiple steps of accessing the content item, and then send emails to the individuals he would like to share the content item with. Although websites available to the public such as blogs may be used to share the content items with other individuals, most blogs do not classify groups of individuals. Accordingly, the content items on the blogs are available to everyone having access to the blog and it is inconvenient, if not impossible, to restrict or allow certain groups of individuals to access the content items from the blog.
If the content item is located on a user's account on the online service, the problem is exacerbated. The user must log into the online service using his authentication information (e.g., username and password), retrieve the content item, and send the content item to individuals she wants to share the content item with. Sometimes, retrieving the content may take prolonged time, and waste the user's network and hardware resources. Although, the user may inform the authentication information and the location of the content item to the individuals with whom the user wants to share the content item, there are security concerns associated with revealing the authentication information to others.
Therefore, there is a need for a scheme that allows a selected group of individuals to conveniently share content items. There is also a need to eliminate the log in process for the online services for each member of a group when the user is engaged in collaborative activities.